Yahoo News The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel actor Reid Scott breaks down Gordon's pursuit of Midge
When it comes to Midge Maisel, Gordon Ford would prefer the words "late night" to have a double meaning.
On the final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) has pivoted to pursuing her career in comedy from the writers' room for late night talk show The Gordon Ford Show. Hired by Gordon (Reid Scott) himself, she dreams of landing a spot as a stand-up on the show — but not as much as Gordon dreams of getting in her pants (er, skirts).
In episode 4, Gordon made a move on Midge in front of his entire staff, going in for a kiss with her on the ice at Rockefeller Center (that's really Brosnahan skating by the way). Then, in episode 5, he upped the ante by asking Midge out on a date and taking her to dinner. Did Ford really hire Midge for her comedic abilities? Or was it always about using it to parlay his way into dating her?
"I'd say it was probably 60, 40," Scott tells EW with a laugh. "60 percent political, 40 percent attraction. And then that balance certainly tips as they go on their journey."
Philippe Antonello/Prime Rachel Brosnahan and Reid Scott on 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'
Anyone with eyes can see that Midge is gorgeous, but for Scott, he sees Gordon's attraction as more complicated and rooted in the complicated power dynamic they have as boss and employee. "She's beautiful, but he's the kind of guy who's really turned on by intelligence and ambition," he says. "He picks that up from her instantly. She's there to buck the system and at first, it rubs him the wrong way, but it also makes her quite beguiling. He's a power junkie and we see it in the way he runs his little fiefdom at the show."
Scott based his character on a range of late night hosts of the era, including Johnny Carson, Steve Allen, and Jack Paar. But he also took particular inspiration from Stephen Colbert. "I hit him up for hours of Zoom conferences," Scott says. "To figure out what it's like to wear all these different masks that these hosts have to wear between home life, personal life, professional life when you're running the show, and then the face that you give America when you're behind the desk."
This isn't Scott's first acting job in the world of late night. On Veep, his character Dan Egan had a stint as a morning show host on cable news. He also starred as a late night writer in Mindy Kaling's Late Night. "I loved mashing up all of my late night heroes with some of the late night and talk show people that I played in the past," he says.
But none of his characters have quite met their match in the way Gordon has with Midge. "You have to think about it in the context of 1960s — this woman who comes into this man's world and starts asserting herself from day one," he notes. "While that is kind of confounding at first, he starts to feed off it. He realizes this is a true compatriot, someone who's cut from the same cloth as him, and then it spirals out of control from there."
In Scott's mind, Gordon's attempt to kiss Midge was, if not pre-meditated, at least something he'd been wanting to do for awhile. "It had crossed his mind for sure," he says. "In that moment, he was very full of himself because they're number one. He tipped a few drinks back and he saw an opening. In the context of 1961, for him, it's like, this is how he's celebrating at an office. You get a little handsy, you get a little forward. Which is completely inappropriate when you look at it now."
Philippe Antonello/Prime New series regular Reid Scott and Rachel Brosnahan in season 5 of 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'
Midge is taken aback, if also mildly amused by the moment, but not as much as Gordon. "He's smiling at himself," Scott says. "He thinks it's so cute and clever, what he's doing. He went for it. He didn't stick the landing, but he gave it a shot. The gauntlet is really thrown now. This challenge ticks up a notch and he really wants to see how far he can take it."
That extends to pursuing Midge and relentlessly asking her to go on a date. Never mind the fact that he's married. Hedy (Nina Arianda) and Gordon have a unique marriage, he tells Midge, and that bears itself out in the reveal that Hedy once dated Susie (Alex Borstein). While he has his own peccadillos, how much does Gordon know about his wife and her past?
"I love the fact that we leave it open to interpretation," he says. "There's a bit of a mystery there. But what we played with was that her family is incredibly powerful. They had some influence to give Gordon his shot. She, in some fashion, is largely responsible for him ascending to this little throne. So, I think they know each other's secrets. They have a very modern relationship."
"It's fairly open. It's fairly, 'Don't ask, don't tell,'" he adds of Hedy and Gordon's marriage. "He's probably aware of some of her dalliances in the past, maybe not specifically with Susie, but that she explored that side of herself in the past. They fancy themselves very hip and very cosmopolitan, very enlightened for the time. He's attracted to strong women, and Hedy is certainly that. She's a tough, driven, powerful woman in her own right. That's probably what attracted him to her in the first place."
Philippe Antonello/Prime Rachel Brosnahan and Reid Scott in 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'
So far, Midge has held firm to resisting Gordon's advances, despite clearly being intrigued by him. "Oh, definitely," Brosnahan says of whether Midge is attracted to Gordon. "He is charming and attractive and funny, which is the most important thing to Midge. But he's also volatile and doesn't seem to see in her what she sees in herself."
But will she give in? And if she does, would it have any chance of working? "I don't think so," Scott says. "She's bigger than he is. They're clearly both ambitious and are after this brass ring. But we're seeing Gordon get his, and Midge still has a long ladder to climb. My gut says that with that level of ambition, she climbs right past him."
Adds Brosnahan: "I don't think there's a risk of them really crossing that line. Midge is, at the moment we meet her in this season, far too ambitious for that."
Scott also surmises that Gordon would never be able to cope with Midge's success and comedic ambitions in the long run (and that is part of why he keeps refusing to put her on the show). "He sees in her someone who's fresh and doing something different," he says. "Because she's a woman, she's doing something that he just can't do. There's no way that he can deliver the same kind of material that she has. That's intimidating. All men were secretly — or not so secretly — very intimidated by strong women at that time. He sees that she's got the goods. It's what draws him to her at first. He also is holding a little too hard and fast to this stupid rule that no writer can come on. But that also probably comes from a place of, 'What if one of my own shows me up?' Nobody wants that."
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is now streaming on Prime Video with new episodes dropping every Friday through May 26.
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